Mare

Mare is an on going project that I started in 2005.

Alessandro Puccinellis series Mare shows waves like fluid landscapes, like mountains gone in a second. Waves like sculptures, frozen in time. Waves shaking, waves towering, waves spraying spindrift, waves breaking. Puccinelli keeps visiting the Portuguese coast for years, but only, when the conditions are rough, when it’s stormy and dark and powerful.
When I first read about the sea, I learned that for long people were afraid of the ocean. It was what was left behind in chaos, the destructing, powerful, carrying the potential of an universal flood. It wasn’t until the 19th century and the Romantic for artists to discover the beauty of the waves – and for doctors to claim the power of salt water to revive the body. The coasts were suddenly a place to stroll, to appreciate the rolling of the waves to the shore.1
But Puccinelli takes away this coast, this saving land. He takes away land, leaving the spectator alone in the mist. We see water, sometimes the horizon, but mostly waves about to break. Puccinelli shows us the view of a sailor, surrounded by water, immersed in the ocean, submitting herself to the way the current pushes.
You rang the bell again, said my companion, while we sailed the Valiente to Spitzbergen. It was just the two of us during this night shift, some of the crew asleep, most seasick. I steered this steel boat through the waves, sliding down, feeling the impact of the break on the starboard side. I rang this bell mounted on our wheelhouse because the ship was going down fast on the huge waves of devil’s dancefloor and then up again. It was stormy, and we were surrounded by grey, grey the water, grey the sky.
The sea is inhuman vastness without heaviness, writes Puccinelli in a mail. I wonder whether he was ever afraid of being too close, of getting sucked into a wave.
The sea is the unknown, that which can never be fully understood. It carries life, it carries the beginning of everything, it carries beauty. The sea, however, is also feared, for her power, her endlessness. The sea is free, writes Puccinelli, no one can say ‘you are mine’. You belong to everyone and have no boundaries. An infinity of contradictions, which ‒ as the Italian poet Giuseppe Conte says ‒ you are free because you contradict yourself.
I feel like Puccinelli is drawn to the ocean, because it is an outer expression of his inner feelings. It is healthy, some kind of catharsis, to see what he feels. The beauty of not a shiny shore and turquoise blue, but of depth, of turmoil, of complexity. The beauty of not knowing what is next. The beauty of chaos.
When regarding Mare I feel rejuvenated. Mare is like a new beginning, a new dawn. What was is gone and the future already glimpses through the waves. I feel soaked, washed, renewed, and full of hope. Whatever comes, I am ready.

Words by: Angelika Wienerroither